Pulled the X1 out of the garage this morning and noticed the front license plate missing. The two screws the former owner had up front were small and no evidence of foul play so figured it fell off. Put an alert on the community web site in case someone found it nearby and started filling out DMV forms to replace it...

Was pondering what could have removed the plate so cleanly without my awareness when both brain cells lit up. I’d run it through the local car wash recently so called down there and the manager had it in his hand. Whew... Normally this story ends with finding the plate at the car wash after paying 25 bucks and filling out multiple DMV forms to cancel old and have new plates re-issued. Breathing a sigh of relief on this one.

Anyone have any knowledge they'd like to share about a 3 monitor system? I currently have a pretty standard setup up, running two Samsung 24" monitors side-by-side, and have an excellent opportunity to upgrade. I've looked into it a bit, and it seems the popular options, for a setup I'm considering, consist of three 24" monitors side-by-side-by-side, a slightly bigger/curved monitor in the middle flanked by two 24" screens, or simply switching to an ultrawide monitor. A single ultrawide monitor, while having some appeal, seem the less desirable to me, unless its in the middle flanked by two others. Any of you guys run three monitor systems that can offer some pros/cons?

My wife at home runs two 24" and a laptop screen but she hardly use the laptop screen for work, mostly running her TV shows in the background. I personally don't use more than one 27", the laptop hardly used.

I have a smaller ultrawide, from LG, and it's great for financial modelling (helps when you are looking at detailed projections for 35 years). It's not so great for regular tasks, unless you want to read 2-3 pages of contracts side-by-side.

Dell and Samsung now have 49" 5120x1440 monitors on the market, for about $1600, if you want to go all out.

I have two 24in and a 55in tv so we can blow the drawings up really big. We had to install 4K graphics cards with hdmi to do it, and I sometimes have display issues, but it works very well most of the time. My machine is an older quad core with an sad hard drive and 8gigs of ram so it’s not exactly a super computer. IT hasn’t noticed that I’m still on Windows 7 and I intend to hold out as long as possible. The graphics cards they installed about 4 years ago really don’t like 10. I can’t remember off hand what card it is, but best guess what ever was cheapest at the time.

Friday - Got myself some swim goggles the other day for my forays into the community center pool. Time was that I could swim all day and not have problems with chlorine, but apparently no longer. Guess we'll see how they work out.

Not sure if I mentioned, but I'll be busy travelling the next month or so. Brazil next week, home for a week, Mexico the week after, home for a week, and then back to Brazil for 8 or 10 days. Meanwhile, my wife gets to pack the house.

Reverse engineered a gut renovation of our CT kitchen when we upgraded appliances. Changed from electric to gas stove that required new external venting. Tile work behind the old vent wasn't right requiring new tile work. Then decided a new kitchen sink was needed and before you know it we're sanding floors, changing cabinets, island, recessed light fixtures and removing popcorn ceiling. Oy-vey. It all starts on Monday and will take 6 weeks if we're lucky.

We live in our kitchen/family room so all furniture and kitchen stuff is now reconfigured in the formal living room and dining room we seldom use. Our first world problem is making that living/dining area our kitchen/living space for the next six weeks.

Proudest moment yesterday was single handedly putting our long 3 person couch on end (minus cushions) on a microfiber throw and wangling it across our hardwood and tile floors through a narrow pass through and down the two steps into the living room without leaving a mark on me, the walls or the couch. Lots of moments it could have gone terribly wrong and definitely getting help for the return trip but sometimes you pull a rabbit out of the hat. :-)

Sometimes, Pat, sh!t just works. Feels good when you do something like that, usually without giving it a whole lot of forethought, and it happens. You're never really sure how, but you're pretty sure you couldn't do again in 10 tries.

With current LED and LCD tv's being wafer thin and light I'd forgotten what a boat anchor my 12 year old Panasonic 40" plasma screen was. A video of me wrestling with that thing would have also revealed my new expanded vocabulary.